By Gabe from Penny Arcade:I admit to being a huge fan of reality tv style game shows. I love shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Hell’s Kitchen, and Master Chef. I even watch shows like Ink Master and Shear Genius. It doesn’t matter if it’s singers, chefs, fashion designers or gardeners. I love watching groups of people pushed together to compete at something they are good at. I don’t know a thing about cooking or dancing but I can’t get enough of these game shows. I’m always amazed when the challenge is something like “make a fruit tart” and one guy says “shit I’ve never made a fruit tart before” and then he proceeds to make a fucking fruit tart. I could never do that and maybe that’s why I love watching it so much. Could you pull a theme out of a hat and then write and draw a comic strip about it? Probably not, but I’m guessing you might like to watch people who can.

That’s the idea for our new show Strip Search.It is the next goal in our Kickstarter and It is a reality game show for web cartoonists. Like any of these other shows I mentioned it is about watching incredibly talented people face off in a competition with a reward that could change their life.

By Tycho from Penny Arcade:The only thing that keeps my workday from being an unbroken stream of Outernauts’ plinks and boinks is the fact that “energy” exists. My compatriot hurts for it, and it’s made a beast of him. Gabriel is not what you would call a “casual” gamer, assuming such a definition still has currency; I’m not entirely sure it does, but lets get it up on the wheel. Generally you figure out what that term means either by saying what it isn’t (it’s not “hardcore”) or via a circuitous definition (casual gamers like casual games). I’m starting to think that it’s best thought of as a genre, given the asymmetrical, bite-size “servings” and other proven systems. Typically this sort of thing is phrased as a war between teh mud-spackled hardcorz and bright Freemium princes, only recently arrived from the future. I would say this is fairly typical of our inability to observe or assess shit. What became clear very quickly is that Gabriel is playing this type of game “wrong,” which is at least partly to blame for his energy drought: he’s not being sufficiently “social.” He’s not acting as a sales force, which would replenish this resource incrementally. He doesn’t use Facebook with any regularity; he’s going there to play. It’s not a diversion: that is what he actively wants to do. He wants to “buy” Outernauts, and there’s your bifurcation. Those of us who have lamented the death of arcades may now “celebrate” in earnest; they are well and truly back. < article continued at Penny Arcade >

By Gabe from Penny Arcade:Our next big Kickstarter stretch goal is the Strip Search web show. This will be like Master Chef for web cartoonists. We will be sharing lots more information about the show soon but right now we are about to hit a much goofier stretch goal. Tycho will cosplay at PAX dressed as a character that you all choose. We should hit this goal pretty soon so we went ahead and put up the voting page. Just hit this page and drop in the name of a character you’d like to see Tycho cosplay. We will let this run for a bit and then narrow it down to the top ten and have a vote.

We didn’t have any idea how this Kickstarter would be received. We think diverting our time and effort from advertisers and their projects to you and the stuff you want is a better arrangement. I can’t thank those of you that have already chipped in enough. Trying crazy things is sort of what we do and you guys have always been there for us.

By Tycho from Penny Arcade:With Part Four, The Proxy comes to a close. It will Prox no more. But! Gabriel must like you, you must have forged a connection somehow, perhaps at PAX; he went deeply, profoundly H.A.M. on today’s strip. I mean, I wrote the words that are on there I guess, but I’ve got nothing to do with this thing. This is some next level shit.

I’m in a kind of underground bunker with the Zeboyd duo, trying to put proper darkbow on the harrowing Precipice Quadrilogy. I wasn’t entirely prepared for the level of enthusiasm I saw from people at San Diego Comic Con for the series; like everything else I get wrapped up in, all the fireworks are taking place in my head. The outward aspect of these projects is mostly me sitting alone, typing in almost complete darkness. To be frank it makes me a little nervous that someone knows how I’m spending that time. Maybe more than a little nervous. Isn’t that strange? When I’m engaged in it, it’s incredibly personal, and private, and that’s mine don’t touch it even though it’s ostensibly being produced for an audience! I feel like I would gather up people’s copies if I could, just scoop them up, and run out into the woods. I know so much about this “universe” that I’m often surprised that other people don’t know it. It’s on the inside of my eyelids, I can never get away from it. I spent so much time in lacy embroidery, poring over it, poking, that it seems like it must be written on me somewhere. I feel like I’m constantly talking about it, but in these meetings I’m having I’m apparently dropping crazy science because people always seem surprised if not horrified. < article continued at Penny Arcade >

This is for planning and day-of execution only. Robert Khoo will take whatever your pre-determined budget is and plan a… uh… experience for you and your friends. A more detailed description to this reward would be against the code. See PA:TS S02E28 for reference.

As someone who attended Robert’s last Bachelor party I can tell you it was a weekend I will never forget. The PATV episode is great but that’s just a tiny fraction of the entire party. At one point I actually approached a cameraman after I realized he was filming me. I grabbed him by the shoulders and just said “burn the tape”. Please for the love of God, if you purchase this reward…invite me.

Mike and Jerry DM - $8000 (1 available)

Mike and Jerry will be your DM for you and 3 of your friends, running an adventure just for you. You just need to handle transportation to Seattle.

I don’t often toot my own horn. I’m not like, some horn tooter. I will say this though. Dungeon Master is something

By Tycho from Penny Arcade:The Proxy continues its proxification unabated, now in its third discrete lozenge. My son is younger than the boy we have included in the strip, and so is at an earlier point in this progression; the rules are interesting to him, insofar as they are a part of an individual card’s overall fascination. He knows, because his dictionary has told him - the dictionary that was once mine - that words are not merely to be collected, and arranged, but befriended:

His Pokemon are collected in a massive binder according to their patron elements, or by their card type. Duplicates are, for now, a waste; unaware of the vital mathematics we use to yoke raw chance, these doppelgangers are the card equivalent of those who brought they cup, yet are reticent to chip in. One day, and this day is fast approaching, the contents of that binder will be radically altered; the connections between discrete play concepts will burn bright. The game will appear in these junctures, toys somehow alchemized into tools. Enthusiasts of On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 should know that we’re getting close to finalizing the first free DLC package, “The Lair Of The Seamstress,” which we’re hoping will come out soon. We don’t know when, exactly, but apparently there’s some kind of big convention or something next month; maybe we’ll try and put it out then. Zeboyd is coming up tomorrow to work on Rain-Slick 4 and the last DLC (also free) for the current one that details the fate of the player character from the first two games. I’m one of those lore weirdos, you know? I always, always, always had a plan. (CW)TB out.<a>(instrumental)

This is very nice to hear. We’ve worked very hard over the last ten years to make sure that our advertising was actually useful. This is not the industry standard. There are many publishers who balk when we tell them we need an early copy of their game before we can commit to advertising. We also don’t allow many of the popular styles of ads like pop-ups, and site take-overs. We also make PA presents projects which are (let’s be clear) ads but actually cool ads. So hearing that many of you appreciate this is great.

It’s a great system but it has some problems in our mind. One problem is that all of these ads lock us into the page view model. That is to say we need people to come read Penny Arcade on our site. So when someone takes the comic and shares it on Tumblr, or Facebook we get screwed out of a pageview. We also can’t put the comic in the RSS because we need you to come visit the site. The advertising model is just not designed to be compatible with the way people want to share content these days. Going forward I think that not being tied to advertising on the site would be best not just for us but for our readers.

That doesn’t mean we’re going to stop talking about awesome games. That is our job! It just means that you will get those recommendations from the comic and the news posts. We love games. We love tearing into the bad ones, we love poking fun at the good ones, and more than anything we love telling you about games you might have missed otherwise. That is what we do and that’s not going to change because we remove the ads.

By Tycho from Penny Arcade:My own son pulled a Zekrom in a booster pack, all shining foil, and he was confused about why you would use an attack that damages yourself until he noticed that, wait a second, dad does that mean yes, that is what it means! Yessss. It won’t be hard for you to tell what is advantageous about it, particularly since every ten points of damage is a distinct “counter” in game terms. But the idea of trading temporary disadvantage for long-term advantage isn’t entirely inbuilt. The ratio of hand-birds to bush-birds, and when you should choose between them, is something you have to learn. It might even have been your father who taught you. My father was a brakeman/switchman, which meant (among other things) that he more or less didn’t exist; I had no Shadow Dad to be a proxy for, which had advantages in its own way. I want to emphasize however that these advantages did not extend to race victory. My own Pinewood Derby car was so objectively bad that I laughed as it lurched down the slope. I was given a Sportsmanship Trophy for it, in fact; either because my laughter was interpreted as laudable equanimity or because it had that edge of madness associated with previous Dark Scout incidents, and they thought a bit of recognition might tamp down the voices. But you couldn’t not laugh! It was horrible. My nominal “car” was largely unchanged from its primal state, except for the addition of a single black and white pinstripe on either side. I don’t think they were the problem, but I am no expert; I’ll look into it. < article continued at Penny Arcade >

By Gabe from Penny Arcade:So the current storyline is indeed taken straight from my life. My son attended his very first Pokemon League night on Tuesday. I played the game very seriously a few years ago but have not touched it recently. My son went in with a deck cobbled together from some of my old cards. It was comprised mostly of pokemon he really liked but had no synergies to speak of. I helped him a bit just making sure he had enough energy and talking to him about how many of each stage in an evolution you should have. He got to the league event and ended up losing all five of his games. Some of them after only a few turns.

I’m incredibly proud of him though. For one thing he kept playing which I can’t immagine was easy. Also he asked if we could practice before he goes back next week. The fact that he wants to go back makes me extremely happy and you can bet we’ll practice. The problem though was more than his inexperience with the game. It was also the fact that the meta for Pokemon appears to have changed drastically since I played.

When I was playing the game decks were built around powerful evolutions. The level X cards appeared on the scene just as I was getting out of the game. All the decks I saw at this event seemed to be built on EX cards. These cards come out quick because they require no evolution to set up and they hit like a ton of bricks. I recognize that it is a poor craftsman who blames his tools but in this case I really feel like we took a knife to a gunfight.

By Tycho from Penny Arcade:If anyone is ever wondering how not to go crazy, I have a small piece of advice: don’t launch a game and sell your house and write a book and move and go to San Diego Comic-Con and launch a Kickstarter within, like two weeks. I’m running up against the theoretical limits of what stressors pharmaceutical science can effectively shield me from. Gabriel just took his heir to a Pokemon TCG tournament, and the roiling emotions generated by this fear engine weren’t something I could leave on the table. Also, Pokemon tourneys (in either form) have historically proven to be efficacious grist.

The card game itself, though ostensibly designed with children in mind, can (like any system of sufficient complexity) be transmuted into srs bzns. I spoke about it once before, when they were ass deep in it, but we had a card table in our office at one point we used to unfold when Kiko and Gabe wanted to play, and ultimately we realized that unfolding this table had become a waste of fucking time. The “meta” at that point favored a deck colloquially known as Galladevoir - somehow these decks end up with names styled after tabloid couples - and it was favored because it allowed you to play your opponent’s discard pile. Kiko had functionally assumed control of the game until Gabriel broke it. I can remember the look on his face when he finally did, because there isn’t much that can surprise him; in this instance, he was well and truly surprised. In essence, he had to make a deck that was (in many ways) “bad.” It was mindbending. After so many rounds of relentless punch/counterpunch in deck construction, this was something wholly oblique. < article continued at Penny Arcade >